Pebble

On the 25th of February in 2015, I backed what would become my most beloved kickstarter project. The Pebble Time smart watch.

I chose the Pebble Time Round edition, which I still believe to this day is the most beautiful smart watch that’s ever been built. I was a long-time Apple Watch holdout simply because Apple didn’t make it as a circle.

PebbleOS is pure delight. My memories of the software are laced with nostalgia, and it’s only 10 years ago! It had this quirky interface that was as fun and beautiful as it was unique. It covered all the bases for me in a Smart Watch:

• Lightweight
• Multi-day battery
• Easily readable outdoors
• Extensible (great developer API and documentation)
• Notifications

The interface for this thing was genius. It’s a watch, right? So, the buttons all relate to time. There’s a column of three buttons down the side of the watch. The top one is for “things that already happened”, the middle on is for “things that are happening now”, and the bottom one for “things that are coming up”.

I loved this thing so much. Here’s a product shot featuring my newborn (at the time) daughter.

And then… acquisition happened. Fitbit stepped in after Pebble filed for insolvency. Then Google bought Fitbit. The founder, Eric Migicovsky, went on to start Beeper, which was then acquired by Automattic. And my beloved Pebble moved from gadget of the year to the annals of techno-history.

And another thing happened. The Apple Watch came along. It solved a very different set of problems. I love my Apple Watch, but I’ve got a list of complaints, too.

• It’s heavy
• It could have better battery life
• WatchOS is kind of terrible
• Something has always bothered me about the always-on backlit screen
• I get a bit bored of the watch faces

The Apple Watch is good, not great, but nobody makes anything quite as good as the Pebble once was. So Apple Watch is now my daily driver.

But hold the phone! It’s just been announced that the Pebble is making a comeback!¹ Turns out, Google open-sourced PebbleOS, a community (aptly named Rebble) has been maintaining an ecosystem of apps and watchfaces, and Eric Migicovsky is down for giving it another spin.

I’m so pumped for this². The particular set of tradeoffs and design principles that Pebble offers is perfect for me. I have a bit of a wishlist for the new Pebble:

• Bring the Round edition back!
• Some basic fitness tracking (integrating with Apple Health)
• Better, brighter, colour E Ink screen
• (Never gonna happen) NFC Payment support

And I want to point out a part of Eric’s post that I think says a lot. What’s going to be different this time? No VC funding.

This time round, we’re keeping things simple. Lessons were learned last time! I’m building a small, narrowly focused company to make these watches. I don’t envision raising money from investors, or hiring a big team. The emphasis is on sustainability. I want to keep making cool gadgets and keep Pebble going long into the future.

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Here’s another product shot, this time for Apple Watch. This is a photo of my son just moments after he was born!